The promise he made her
by WindTreesandStars
Summary: He made her a promise, and it was a promise he kept.  Short one-shot.  Finchel.


**_AN: Nothing related to Glee is owned by me._**

"You see, sweetheart? I kept my promise."

He looked around, and saw that the privacy he'd counted on having for a few more moments was still there.

"I know you told me not to make it—that you didn't need me to promise you anything, that we were past needing to hold each other to account with words and vows. But I know what promises mean to you, and I _wanted_ to make this one—it came _from_ me, _for _you, without any asking or demand of a promise back in return."

The tears that had been standing in his eyes welled over, slowly tracing down the lines and caverns time—years of laughter, years of struggle, all of them years shared with her—had carved into his face.

"I've kept it all these years; I'm keeping it still. I'll keep it forever, because the first thing I'll do when my time comes will be to find you immediately, and then nothing,_ ever_, will pry me from your side."

He heard light steps making their way across the uneven ground, leaves crunching beneath her feet as she walked toward him, and, softer still, the faint gurgles and mewling noises of the small bundle held close in her arms.

"He's beautiful, sweetheart. He looks just like his grandfather did, with your eyes and lips and hair. And yes, because I know you're asking—he has my nose. And from the way he yelled during the ceremony, I know he has your lung capacity and breath control, too."

He turned, smiling his loving, crooked smile at her as she came up to stand by his side, carefully placing the bundle in his outstretched, capable, experienced hands.

"Stella came with me; she wanted him to meet you, too. Here he is; our first great-grandchild. Benjamin," he looked down into _her_ eyes in the infant's face-her fathomless, deep brown eyes-which were staring intently back into his, "meet your great-grandmother. She and I both love you, more than you'll ever know."

He stood there, rocking the infant back and forth in his large, gentle arms and crooning an old, old song under his breath. The slight young woman with the dark hair took a smooth stone out of her pocket, lifted it to her lips, then to his, and then to the lips of her eight-day-old son, before slowly moving to the rounded monument and adding it to the pile already there atop the large, granite marker. He watched as the tears began to flow down her face while she knelt and traced her fingers over her grandmother's name and dates, and over his name and the date of his birth. Looking up at him, she asked, for the first time,

"It doesn't bother you? Seeing your name there, with the blank space for a date just waiting to be filled in?"

"No, it doesn't bother me, Stella-Our-Star. It's just one more way of showing that I'm with her. When the date gets filled in you'll know that we're back together—_completely together_—again. It's not something to be sad about, Star. It may not come for a while—part of me hopes it takes some time, so that I can tell Benjamin all about her and have him be old enough to remember her and me both. But if I go earlier, I know you'll tell him, and the others that come after him; and you'll still come here to sing us your songs and preview your shows for us, just like you do for her now."

She was slowly nodding as she gazed at him. "Of course; I couldn't step out on the stage on opening night without letting her hear me first. It's always been that way, and I promise, I'll always . . . ."

"Don't promise, Star; we know you'll be here. I'm the only one who needed to make her a promise, and I made it because _I_ needed to, and I've kept it. I never left her again; I never, ever will. I even let her go first, so that I'd never be the one to go away from her. I _had_ to promise it, Stella-Star, for my own sake, to remind myself of the one time I broke that promise; but she didn't _need_ to hear it from me again, and I _never _needed to hear it from her, and we don't need to hear it from you. You're your grandmother through and through, Stella Rachel, and your grandmother never in her life needed to make a promise to keep faith with those she loved; she just did it—it's who she was, and who you are, too."

"Here," he continued, nodding his head from the now sleeping child toward its mother, "come take him. He's had a traumatic day; I'm glad they do this ceremony when the boys are too young to remember it. It was bad enough for _me_ to have to remember your father's bris. I had nightmares for months about Christopher's cries—in fact, he sounded a lot like Benjamin did today."

She stood up, taking her child and cradling him close to her body, murmuring, "You won't remember the crying or the pain, will you, Benjamin Finn?"

She started singing him a lullaby, moving her eyes from her sleeping first-born child to her grandfather's tall frame as he bent down and knelt before the grave. She saw him press a kiss to her grandmother's carved name, another kiss to the inlaid, gold-plated star that shone beside the name, and then watched as he finally moved his fingers in a caress over the inscription etched into the stone, part of an intricate pattern that wove his name and hers together. She could barely hear the words he whispered before he straightened himself and walked back toward her, gently putting his arm around her shoulders as the three of them—grandfather, granddaughter, and great-grandson—began their walk back to the parked car.

It didn't matter that she couldn't hear him—she knew that the words he had whispered to his beloved wife were the words of the inscription on their stone. They were the chorus of the song he had been singing to her baby, their great-grandchild, as he introduced Benjamin to his great-grandmother; words from the first song she herself ever remembered hearing her grandparents sing. They were the words he always sang for Grandma Rachel, all their whole life long: "I'm forever yours, faithfully."


End file.
